Level Up!

It's been awhile since I posted last, and I'm sorry about that. I've been a bit busy with far too much. From choosing what direction that I want to go in with the studio, to working out details on my project, to finding freelance work, and to the reason for this update...I have finally jumped in the deep end and committed myself to learning blender, and it's going quite well much to my surprise.

Anyone who has known me for a really long time knows that I have always been a hater against blender for numerous reasons, mostly the unconventional UI, and the crazy usage of keyboard shortcuts for just about everything, and because it was "limited" in it's capabilities.

I WAS WRONG. SO WRONG. SO DAMNED WRONG I WISH I COULD GO BACK IN TIME TO SLAP MYSELF AND LEARN HOW WRONG I WAS.

Blender is by far the easiest to use 3d package I have ever touched. It is also the most comprehensive and complete package, and the best part about it is that it is 100% fully and totally legally F. R. E. E., that's right, I said FREE! And it's available for all major operating systems, so that means whether you use Windows, Linux, or Mac, you have access to this incredible software.

Now, the UI is indeed unconventional, yes, but this is actually a good thing. I wish more software worked the way that blender does. The manner in which the panels and controls are interacted with is far superior to anything I have ever used before. Take the hour or so that it takes to learn how to use the UI in blender and you will no longer think it to be a hindrance to the use of the software.

The keyboard shortcuts are indeed there, and some are downright crazy. I'm looking at you, you W-Key Specials menu! But it's actually pretty easy to use them once you learn them. It's worth the hour it will take you to learn the shortcuts. Here are a few of them to get you started.

In the 3D view in Object Mode:

Press the A key to select or de-select all objects in the scene.

Press the X key to delete the selected objects.

Press the G key to grab the selected objects allowing you to freely translate (move) them. Use this in addition to the X, Y, and Z keys to restrict translation to a specific axis.

Press the R key to rotate the selected objects freely. You can use the same axis restriction keys to your advantage here as well.

Press the S key to scale the selected objects freely. Same as the grab and rotate tools, use the restriction keys to have sensible scaling on an axis.

Press Shift+A key to bring up the Add menu. From here you can add things to your scene.

Press the Tab key to switch to Edit Mode.

That's all that I have time to list. Learn more by checking out blender for yourself! Below are some things I made with blender (the tree I modeled with Wings3D before learning blender) and have put into Unity for a quick turntable.